Tell me everything about the Free Dining!

[have2getaway]

I was planning to go in January, but I am now considering going sooner due to the free dining. I was curious as to what people are being quoted for a total overall price and if it really was a savings. My other concern is will the crowds be larger due to this special promotion? I just wasn't sure if they increased the room or ticket rate. It all just sounds too good to be true. Is it?

 

[kimatigger]

The room rates are the same you just have to pay rack rate. No other discounts allowed. The ticket prices are the same too.

 

[Msslaydbug]

Our quote for POP for 2 adults,1child, and an infant was $695 for 6 nights and 1 days no park hopping passes. We have annual passes so we really didn't need the tickets

 

[mom2febgirls]

Our ressie was for 2 GVC rooms at the Poly with 6 day MYW hoppers (4 adults/4 kids).
The room was $410/nt at rack rate. With AAA we could have gotten it for $350/nt. The free dining is way more of a savings than we could have gotten using AAA.

 

[Aurora in blue]

We are getting PoP for 1474.00 (and some change)7 nights,7 day hopper for a family of 4 two adults/ two children. We booked the trip because of free dining. We were orginally going to stay at Corondo Springs and that price was 1919.00.

 

[have2getaway]

Does the $1474 include food for all 7 days, or just for the number of days you bought tickets to the park? For example, if you bought 4 MYW tickets do you get the free dining for those four days, or is it for your length of stay? If it's the length of stay, I can see why it's worth it. Also, are all meals covered. It looked like with the plan you had to get one meal on your own. Is this accurate? Will September be crazy now with the free dining?

 

[MinnieM21]

Does the $1474 include food for all 7 days, or just for the number of days you bought tickets to the park? For example, if you bought 4 MYW tickets do you get the free dining for those four days, or is it for your length of stay? If it's the length of stay, I can see why it's worth it. Also, are all meals covered. It looked like with the plan you had to get one meal on your own. Is this accurate? Will September be crazy now with the free dining?

It's for the length of your stay.

 

[Ardenne]

Does the $1474 include food for all 7 days, or just for the number of days you bought tickets to the park? For example, if you bought 4 MYW tickets do you get the free dining for those four days, or is it for your length of stay? If it's the length of stay, I can see why it's worth it. Also, are all meals covered. It looked like with the plan you had to get one meal on your own. Is this accurate? Will September be crazy now with the free dining?

Yes, for the length of your stay. Each person 3 and up included in your reservation gets 1 table service meal, 1 counter service meal, and one snack per day of the stay. (Kids under 3 eat free at buffets and can share from your plate free elsewhere.) I suppose you could consider that still needing to get one meal on your own, but I expect we'll have a light snacky breakfast in our room before heading out most mornings and be fine the rest of the day. Most people say that the meals tend to be large enough that they actually end up with more food than they can reasonably eat. There's quite a bit of discussion on the restaurant board if you want to read more on the subject.

Our package came to $1,276.67 for our family of 4 for 7 nights with 7 day park-hopper passes, and free dining for length of stay, Oct. 1-8. (You have to check in by Oct. 4 to get the free dining, but as long as you check in by the 4th, the deal will cover your entire length of stay.) Definitely a good deal, IMHO

 

[It's A Happy Day]

All Star Sports October 3-13...$1926.00 - 2 adults/2 children - this includes Hotel, 7 day hopper plus passes (includes 5 options - disneyquest/water parks/PI), and food - 10 TS, 10 CS, and 10 snacks per person in our group. The only cost above this will be transportation to Florida, any extra food we might want, and souveniers! We are also opting to do MNSSHP on October 6th and paid on top of above cost for those passes. I gave up a AAA discount of around $100.00 to get the free food and completely think it will be worth it. We had planned on eating mostly counter service and now we will get the character meals we wanted to do and sit down meals we would like to do w/o the extra cost!

 

[HaleyB]

I don't think you have to worry that the promotion will cause huge crowds. They extended it because they needed to fill more rooms.

We are going Oct 2-10th at Pop with 8 day Premium (hopping and minor parks) MYW tickets, 2 adults and 2 children between 3-9. $1762. I had the trip booked prior to the code release and then added the discount to my ressie so I am 100% sure the price is exactly the same and the dining plan is really free.

 

[Ardenne]

Posting again to add this for clarification: the free dining plan is super-flexible, which makes it especially nice. The credits are all pooled together, like "It's a Happy Day" explained, and you can distribute them however you like over the course of your stay. If you want to eat 3 table service meals in one day, and you can eat that much, that's fine! Or if you'd like to eat at a 'signature' restaurant, you can use 2 of your table service credits on one meal. Counter service meals at a lot of places are large enough to share between 2 people, so that could let you save credits for later use -- for instance, you and a companion could use 1 cs credit to eat a shared lunch, and 1 more cs credit to eat a shared dinner, and then you'd each have a TS for that day left over, which you could put toward a signature meal or use to have two TS meals in one day.

We could have gotten the trip package more cheaply with a discounted room and no free food, since the free dining required using no discounts for room or tickets -- but that would have saved us only around $100, which would probably not be enough to cover food for the entire family for a full week even if we always ate outside of the parks. We'll eat much better food and much more conveniently this way (and we'll be doing some character meals, which we never would have done otherwise.) I think it's very much worthwhile.

 

[momof2cuties]

Help! I can't figure out how to get the free dining. Am I missing something on the website? I am thinking of Oct 3 - 10th, should the free dining come up automatically or do I have to call? Thanks!

 

[WDWRC]

When you are on the main page of disneyworld.com, click the "Stay Play DIne" Link to the discounted pkg, and there will be a "book now" link. Use that and fill in your dates. It should pull up from there....otherwise...give me or another agent at Disney Reservations a call tomorrow morning and we would be happy to book it for you!

 

[momof2cuties]

When you are on the main page of disneyworld.com, click the "Stay Play DIne" Link to the discounted pkg, and there will be a "book now" link. Use that and fill in your dates. It should pull up from there....otherwise...give me or another agent at Disney Reservations a call tomorrow morning and we would be happy to book it for you!

Thanks a bunch - finally got it!!